IMSI Anyone?

Anonymous · 2015-08-26 22:49

So, I originally had this in /tech/ but decided to move it because, well, that was a rather stupid place to have it. I was thinking if anyone was interested in RF/Radio enough to want to build an IMSI catcher? Or rather work on on the specs for an "open source" one, mainly for fun. One could just take a hackRF or bladeRF hook it up to an amp and a nice antenna and have some awesome software poke at the GMS stack, but that is old hat. So my main proposal is to attempt to build up everything into a self contained unit. Integrated RF amp and everything. Something like a 4U rack case or a Pelican 1670, nice a portable, just attach power and antenna and go. The feasibility of this is fairly certain, it just depends on who wants to join in and help. I think it could be a cool project that involves a wide array of skills from /diy/, any thoughts?

Anonymous · 2015-08-27 03:00

Hi, I'm kind of new to the radio thing. Is this anything like a radio telescope?

Anonymous · 2015-08-27 11:45

>>1061 In some ways yes, for a radio telescope all you really need is a receiver, like the RTL-SDR and an antenna that is designed for the frequencies you want. The RTL-SDR you can snag for $30 but it is limited to 24MHz to 1766MHz. That should be enough for any general radio telescope. The 24MHz to 1766MHz should give you a fair range for the telescope but you would be missing out on anything larger than ~12m and anything smaller than ~17cm. The next issue is the antenna, but I'll leave that up to you.

Anonymous · 2015-08-27 11:57

>>1061 Amendment to >>1062 If you want to know how I got the wavelength from the frequency. Just λ = c/v, so λ = 2.998×10^8 m/s / 1.766×10^9 Hz λ = 0.16976 m Therefore λ ~= 17cm

Anonymous · 2015-08-27 14:10

>DEF CON 18 - Chris Paget - Practical Cellphone Spying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQSu9cBaojc but he spent ~1500 US$

Anonymous · 2015-08-27 14:17

>>1064 Yeah I saw that, but I want to go a step further, like have a "market-ready" type thing and not just some initial hack, although I was quite impressed with what he did. We want to beat the NSA at it's own game, hehe.

Anonymous · 2015-09-26 09:02

I'd be down to help out with that. Anything programming related that is.

Anonymous · 2015-09-26 13:19

>>1175 I myself can do that as well, I think when it comes to this project we have plenty of software people, but the hardware aspect is the pain in the but.